The Hotel Monika boasts some white turrets to match its pastel pink paint job (31 July 2018).

This building is utterly wacky. I love it. That corner turret is sort of one huge bay window on steroids. The top tower part is so skinny that I wonder if it’s even possible for a human being to squeeze up there. And you’ve got roof elements on the left that look like they belong on top of a Medieval Gothic cathedral, while on the right it looks like Walt Disney dreamed up those turrets (31 July 2018).

This tamer, Art Nouveau-inspired building from 1909 is called the “Cat House.” Note the black cats on the two towers (31 July 2018).

The local legend is that this building was constructed by a merchant who’d been snubbed by the Great Guild across the street. In retaliation, he had the black cats installed with their rear ends facing the guild hall. The Great Guild noticed the slight, and the whole issue was resolved when the Great Guild made an about-face and admitted the merchant into their ranks, on the condition that he turn the cats around so they face the other way (31 July 2018).

Many of Rīga’s wackiest Art Nouveau façades can be found on a tiny street called Alberta Iela. I can stand in front of buildings like this one for several minutes, examining every minute detail, the same way I would in front of, say, a Breughel painting with all sorts of little vignettes of peasant life going on (30 July 2018).

A sphinx with boobs! Where have I seen this before? Oh yes! Prague. Now I know what was going on there: Art Nouveau (30 July 2018).

This building is my favorite one in all of Rīga, I think. Griffons, gargoyles, a winged disembodied head, lions with fists at the end of their tails… (30 July 2018)

…some distressed medusa-type heads… (30 July 2018)

…and still more medusae, looking even more agonized (30 July 2018).

It’s like they tell stories. Here we’ve got two black cats, prowling for unwary pigeons maybe? The guy above the window looks like the neighborhood busybody, spying on everyone and writing down notes. And on top you’ve got a young lad with a ladder, a roofer or chimney-sweep, say, pausing for a snack of grapes (31 July 2018).

If the medusa building was my favorite, make this one my second favorite. Those are some seriously perturbed faces in the bottom row there. The two helmeted dudes are looking pretty vigilant, and the three crowned figures look serene despite the snakes crawling onto their foreheads (30 July 2018).

This is the spectacularly ornate Blackheads’ House. The Blackheads were a fraternity of unmarried German merchants who, in the days of the Hanseatic League, had chapter houses all over the Baltic and northern Europe. Their name derives from their patron saint, Maurice, a black-haired Roman of African descent. Incredibly, after the original Blackheads House was bombed into rubble during World War II, and after the Soviets bulldozed the ruins in the late 1940s, someone found the original blueprints and the entire elaborate structure that you see here was rebuilt in 1999. Another fun fact: According to local legend, on Christmas Eve 1510, the rowdy, drunken inhabitants of the Blackheads’ House chopped down a pine tree, dragged it back to their clubhouse, bedecked it with flowers, and, at the end of the night, set the tree ablaze. And thus the Christmas tree was born. Comedian Jim Gaffigan’s speculation about the origin of this holiday tradition, it turns out, was pretty much spot-on (31 July 2018).

Rīga’s Old Town is what I’ve come to expect: Cobblestone pedestrian streets, narrow lanes fronted by even narrower buildings, church spires, outdoor cafés, and (modest) hordes of tourists (31 July 2018).

These medieval houses, known as the “Three Brothers,” are among the oldest buildings in town. The one on the right, from the 16th century, is in fact the oldest residential building in the city (31 July 2018).

This gargantuan building is the Soviet-era (1961) Latvian Academy of Science building, a gift from Stalin modeled on a cluster of similar, but even larger, buildings in Moscow. Soviet architecture gets a bad rap, but I think this is quite a majestic building, although it dwarfs everything around it, including the garishly painted Orthodox church on the left there. Which reminds me, this building sits in Moskavas Forštate, or “Moscow Suburb,” inhabited mainly by ethnic Russians, who make up about half of Rīga’s (and Latvia’s) population and generally prefer not to integrate. For example, they typically speak only Russian and don’t bother to learn Latvian (31 July 2018).

Rīga’s huge Freedom Monument stands behind me. It was erected in 1935 to celebrate Latvian independence. Like the other Baltic countries, Latvia was gobbled up by Russia in the late 18th century and briefly regained its independence between the World Wars. And like the other Baltics, it was peacefully assimilated by Moscow in 1940, then conquered by the Nazis, then “liberated” by the Red Army and re-incorporated into the Soviet Union until 1991. Incredibly, when Czar Peter the Great took Rīga from its previous rulers, the Swedes, in the 18th century, Rīga was the largest city in Sweden, bigger even than the capital, Stockholm. And by World War I, it was the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and St. Petersburg (30 July 2018).

Another gorgeous onion-domed Orthodox church. In this case, it’s the modern (1886), golden-domed Nativity of Christ Cathedral (31 July 2018).

Rīga has a nice, shady belt of parks along its City Canal. I tried to pass this way as often as possible en route from my hotel to the Old Town and the bus station and back (31 July 2018).

One last gawk-worthy sight: Rīga’s Central Market. Now pretty much every city in Europe has a main market where you can buy fresh produce, local handicrafts, souvenirs, and what-not. You won’t see many photos of them in my blog, however, since they’re generally morning affairs (closing officially around 2pm, but pretty dead by lunchtime), and I don’t do mornings. And I didn’t this time either; I took these photos around 2pm, when the market was still, happily, open, but most of the vendors had already gone home. But I wasn’t here for the produce (31 July 2018).

No, I wanted to see the inside of a World War I German Zeppelin hangar. In 1930, needing a larger space to accommodate its expanding market, Rīga purchased several Zeppelin hangars that the Germans left behind in territory that became western Latvia after the war.  They dismantled them and moved them here piece by piece. I can just imagine a giant blimp sailing ponderously overhead and out the hangar door, can’t you? (31 July 2018)